


Stolen Moments of Eternity

by melimarron



Series: At the End of the World, Who Will Bring Your Grave Flowers? [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Canon Compliant, F/M, Falling In Love, Not Beta Read, Vision's death and what led up to it, if you're reading this series..., sorry - Freeform, then you already know, which...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-03-28
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23363290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/melimarron/pseuds/melimarron
Summary: Vision was created to protect humanity above all things.Even love.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff & Vision, Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: At the End of the World, Who Will Bring Your Grave Flowers? [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1656145
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	Stolen Moments of Eternity

Vision is a creature of logic, first and foremost.

His primary purpose is to protect humanity. He knows that this is due to JARVIS’ influence on his mind, and as a reaction against the atrocities of Ultron.

His life makes sense, if you can say that a robot is alive. He is a protector, and the best way to ensure that humanity is safe is to be with the Avengers and help to take on any threats to Earth.

Vision has to keep the world safe. Even at the cost of his own life. He knows this. His programming knows this.

Then he makes friends with Wanda Maximoff, and things start getting… confused.

Vision is a creature of logic. Wanda is human, and so, by definition, is not logical. And yet, as he gets to know her, he finds that his own decisions are making less and less logical sense.

He doesn’t realize how he’s sliding away from the comforts of rationality until after the Civil War, where everything he did made sense at the time, only to think back on it later and feel nothing but horror and shame.

He’s protected humans, yes, but at the cost of his teammates, friends, and Wanda. Somehow, losing their trust feels worse than if he had simply stood aside and refused to sign the Accords.

He creates his priority list in his mind as he agonizes over contacting Wanda after the Raft. Priority Number One: Protect the world. Priority Number Two: Protect Wanda.

He isn’t sure what he will do if he ever has to protect the world at the cost of Wanda again.

* * *

It must be a flaw in his programming. It has to be. He was created to protect humanity. He cannot do that correctly if he’s thinking of one human in particular all the time.

Vision is a creature of logic. He is supposed to protect humanity at all costs. If even a single innocent human dies unwillingly in an extraterrestrial attack when there was a definitive way to keep them safe during the battle, Vision considers himself to have failed.

He has failed before, in Sokovia, and he knows that he will fail again in the future.

He trains nonstop in the months after the Civil War. Making his forehead blasts more precise, practicing looking human, trying to figure out ways to win wars with minimal loss of human life.

Somehow, all that fades to the background when Wanda contacts him again.

* * *

Being with Wanda, with no laws or world-destroying monsters or even anyone who could barge in at any moment, is blissful. Vision thinks that he could stay with her forever, or maybe he already has. Each moment with her is stolen from the world that wants to destroy her and mock him. But together, they create their own world.

Ignoring the world, ignoring his programming, ignoring his primary purpose, has consequences. Neither of them would ever stand by if the world was threatened, but as they spend more and more time together, Vision comes to realize that when he thinks of protecting humanity, he thinks first of Wanda, and then Sokovia.

He mentions this to Wanda, once, because if he told Tony or Rhodes, they would want to know why, and then they would figure out that he had been seeing Wanda, and they would tell General Ross, and then Vision would no longer have to worry about protecting the world or protecting Wanda because she would be facing death row.

(He doesn’t know what he would do if that did happen. His programming commands that he obey the law. But there are some things worth defying his programming for. There are some things he has to defy his programming for.)

She just laughs and kisses him when he tells her, completely unconcerned with how his programming is twisting away from his control to create something unprecedented and new. _Vizh, listen, there’s nothing wrong with you. You’re your own person now._

He tried to argue that no, he wasn’t, he was a defense mechanism wrapped up in a humanlike body, but she’d just tapped the Mind Stone with her scarlet power and said, _no, you’re not. You have a mind that is more than machinery. You have a way to think and feel and love. It’s insanity to expect you not to feel emotions when you have a way to feel them._

That night, with Wanda sleeping next to him, he asks himself again if he would choose Wanda over the world, now that he has her back in his arms.

He still has no answer for himself.

* * *

By the time Thanos comes to Earth, Vision makes his choice, and quickly. Finally, after years of indecision, logic and duty trumps love, as it was always going to, in the mind of a man created only to keep humanity safe.

The world must be saved. The world must be preserved.

If he can save the world at the cost of his own life, then he will have fulfilled his purpose for being and protected Wanda at the same time.

Vision is a creature of logic. Killing him is the logical choice. Thanos cannot be allowed to have all the Stones.

Somehow, the thought of dying makes his hands shake when nobody is looking at him.

But he is a robot created to protect humanity. There is no better way to protect humanity than to die.

He would be leaving Wanda alone, with nobody who understood her- or even tried to understand her, since Clint hadn’t been seen in years. But she would be alive.

Vision takes a deep breath, ignoring the stabbing pain in his side from the alien’s weapon, and announces that he needs to die.

His primary purpose is to keep humanity safe. Vision will not allow a single innocent, unwilling soul to die while there is the easier solution of allowing the man who was never really a man to die.

* * *

They try to save him.

Vision allows them to, because for all his logic, his secondary purpose in life revolves around Wanda Maximoff, and he wants to stay alive for her.

In order to protect humanity, Vision must die.

When he was first born, he would not have questioned it.

Wanda confused things.

Wanda made him think there were things worth ignoring his primary purpose for.

* * *

Vision is a creature of logic. But watching Wanda crying as she kills him- destroys him- he remembers that she is not, and that he is not, purely a creature of logic anymore.

They’ve been through too much for that.

“I love you,” he says, too quietly for Wanda to hear.

Then all of a sudden, Wanda is on the ground and Thanos is gripping Vision by the neck. There is no time to think. There is no time to fire a blast at Thanos. There is no more time.

There is no more time, and Vision has failed.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in like an hour, so if you see any typos or weird characterization, let me know!


End file.
